Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above.
You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed.
To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

“I’m pretty confident that in the US Microsoft is going to partner with a cable TV provider, so I expect that the console will be priced like a smart phone. I expect you’ll be paying $99 for the console with a cable TV subscription.”

I listened to the first half of Podcast Beyond last night while trying to go back to sleep, and I cannot believe how mind-blowing some of the interactions in Dust 514 are going to be. One of the lead designers or producers (I can't remember which) was interviewed on the show, and started talking about how EVE Online and D514 are going to intersect.

EVE players will actually be able to drop bombs of some sort during a D514 match, particularly if it impacts their personal interest in the MMORPG. However, there is recourse for D514 players on the ground -- there are orbital cannons in the game that you can use to fire back at the EVE players who are firing from ships in space. Freaking awesome.

I was accepted into the beta, and have only played two matches so far, but it's definitely an interesting experience. From what I understand, there will be as many as 64 players per match. The community is too small, so I haven't seen this yet, but I'm looking forward to it possibly delivering what M.A.G. couldn't.

Not a fan of the design, especially the top. Considering they are pricing the product for mass adoption, i think they should have made the design more consumer friendly.

Too late? Nah...they're still selling PS2s, right?...i think in the long run the PS3 will come out as #2 overall in sales.

The PS3 is my favorite console this gen (and this coming from a nintendo fanboy). It's got the best exclusive single player games(the kind of games I play), but also a great media player. Dare I say...this is the best "box" i have connected to my TV.

I'm not saying I like this redesign but throw a $150 price tag on it and I could pick it up for the 5/6 games I've been looking to play on PS3 (depending on how "The Last of Us" fairs on release) Not to mention I could use a decent DVD player on my non gaming tv.

Not sure about the ridged top either, and the top loading optical is a bit of a weird one to me for 2012 hardware. Nobody who properly uses it with game installs, DLC, video etc isn't going to get far with the 16GB version. I'll keep on with my PS3 fat and 640GB drive thanks.

Well this weekend I pre ordered the Forza Horizon LE and decided to do the same with the Halo 4 Xbox out in November. I've got no interest in playing Halo 4, but the console does look very nice and my ye olde non HDMI 360 is a bit of a hairdryer, and is on its second life after red ringing a few years ago.

It's translucent grey with blue/silver graphics, and blue ring lights instead of green on the console and controllers. And it makes may or may not make different noises for the disc tray and power buttons . 320GB drive, 2 controllers, £269.

While I was there I also had a look at a 3DS XL demo unit. The 3D depth is easier to see and focus on (for me anyway) compared to the smaller screen 3DS, and it keeps the effect if you tilt the screen away a bit now too. Still not sure on actually getting one, probably not. But I liked the big screen and the case looked better than the 3DS.

Man that's ugly. That's what an xbox would look like if Tron took a dump on it.

Just to clarify, do you mean Tron or Tron: Legacy?
As for it's looks, it seems prime for a lot of extra non-essential lighting to make the entire case "glow". Which could be cool, in a weird Xzibit-car-makeover kinda way...

While I was there I also had a look at a 3DS XL demo unit. The 3D depth is easier to see and focus on (for me anyway) compared to the smaller screen 3DS, and it keeps the effect if you tilt the screen away a bit now too. Still not sure on actually getting one, probably not. But I liked the big screen and the case looked better than the 3DS.

I traded my (original) 3DS for a 3DS XL, silver model so it matches my Macs, sort of, it is darker. The screens are amazing, both of them. The upper screen is less reflective than before. The whole unit design itself is a huge improvement, from the buttons (I don't mess with the volume slider any longer while playing) to the case with the friendly, rounded edges. It is everything what the original 3DS should have been. Easily, the most amazing piece of hardware Nintendo had ever built.

He's an ex-softie, and it has been clear for a while that he does not like the way MS is going. This is just the latest such tirade. One wonders how much is his true feelings, how much is inside info from old friends (Sinofsky is not exactly universally loved) and how much is an attempt to build opinion.

The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.

"not awesome" != "catastrophe". I suspect that just about any version of Mac OS X can be considered "not awesome" - especially 10.6 and below, as they did not support any remotely recent version of GLSL - but they're not catastrophes in the sense that they made things worse.

The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.

The biggest problem in gaming today is that the gaming industry thinks we're all out to get them. They think gamers are the enemy, a group that needs to be treated with disdain and avoided whenever possible. They think the only way to fool us into buying their products is to cover everything in a shroud of secrecy, only drip-feeding us pretty trailers and juicy soundbites during carefully-tailored marketing campaigns. They think we should just sit there and lap it up.

Game makers are afraid to get our hopes up about projects that might be cancelled. They won't talk about games they've spent months or years creating. They won't show us prototypes or tell us about problems or even answer the most rudimentary questions, like "will this game be multiplatform?" or "can we use guns in this one?"

Regarding the first paragraph, they have learned that an informed consumer is a dangerous consumer, and while good PR will enhance sales, the flip-side is much more costly and the risk does not justify the reward.

Sometimes they won't even confirm a video game's existence. When asked by Kotaku last month if Final Fantasy Versus XIII, a game announced in 2006, was still under development, developer Square Enix refused to answer. They wouldn't confirm or deny the existence of a game they had already announced.

The japanese are even worse, but it's reminiscent of how Activision will pretend there isn't another Call of Duty coming until May of each year.

Sometimes things just get preposterous: earlier this year, when I casually asked Kingdom Hearts co-director Tai Yasue how many people helped make Dream Drop Distance, a PR representative immediately interrupted to say they couldn't comment.

That's right: Square Enix wouldn't even say how many people worked on one of their games. Even though I can just go in and count the credits.

And we're not often asking for spoilers. Usually we just want to get excited about the video games and video game makers we love. We want to hear why publishers make the decisions they make. We want to see cool concept art. We want developers to tell us about how much they've worked, how much blood and sweat was required to make each game what it is. We want to know why a game studio can shut down even when its game hit #1 on sales charts for the month it came out.

And, yeah, we want to hear about games that might be axed. We're not unreasonable; we understand that things change, that games sometimes have to be cancelled.

It's okay to throw around the "We don't comment on rumors and speculation" line, but try not to make it your default response to everything that crosses your desks. You don't have to tell us about the next Xbox, but it's okay to shed a little light on your plans for a new HD collection bundle. Nobody's going to die if you have to make your official announcement a few days early. We'll all still be talking about it.

Gaming relationships are hard, but it seems that they're harder than ever. Quick, name a developer that all gamers love. Hard, right?

Valve: Yes, Portal is great and all, but where is Halflife 3???
ID: They haven't made a successful game since Quake 3 Arena.
Blizzard: Diablo 3 network problems are the worst sign of them dropping in everyone's affection, but honestly - who thought that Mists of Pandaria was the way to go?
Bioware: All the yelling over the ME3 ending aside (because honestly, it wasn't really justified), I have not seen a fanbase hate so badly on a game like they did on DA2. Bioware responding by locking people out of their games did not exactly soothe feelings.

And this is just reasonably well-liked developers. If we start talking about publishers like EA, Activision and Ubisoft, the vitriol will be hip-deep in here for DRM reasons alone. I will admit to not seeing anyone hate on Rockstar recently, but they're hardly a non-controversial developer. I personally have some soft spots for Obsidian and Firxais, but that's only because I'm patient enough to wait on some patches before picking up their games. Bethesda, maybe?

Maybe I have my rose-colored rear view mirror enabled, but doesn't it feel like there is more hate against developers these days?

The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.

I have gone on record a number of times, saying that the XBLA certification process makes games worse rather than better. But that is a pretty old experience for me now (4 years ago), and they are unlikely to change any of that stuff until the new console comes out anyway. Keep in mind that the Xbox people as a whole do not think of XBLA as a high priority (you can get a glimpse of this from the E3 press conferences, etc).

But, I think the more important issue applies globally, to all of Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo (and not just to smaller downloadable games, but to every game regardless of size). The certification processes of all these platform holders were based on the idea that all these steps they test are absolutely necessary for software to run robustly, and that software robustness is super-important for the health of their platform and its perception by customers.

But, look at iOS. There is almost no certification process for iOS, so by the Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo theory, the apps should be crashing all the time, everyone should think of iOS as sucky, etc. But in fact this is not what is happening. There is no public outcry for more testing and robustness of iOS software.

Part of this may be that iOS software is so easily patched; so maybe a heavy cert process made sense back in the disc-only days, but as we go into the next console generation it becomes unnecessary. But something tells me that Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo are not really going to let up on cert, even though they say they will. It’s just “not in their DNA” as they say. The proof of this is the bizarre over-complexification that already happens with console games today, and is baked into the current certifications, that any of them could easily fix, but none of them do, because they don’t care.

Given the game-breaking bugs that pass cert, I find it suspect that they really do all that robust testing at all, and now just collect the cash, sit on the patch then release it after the appropriate amount of time.

A few days after having written this letter, I just have one more thought to add: I know that Microsoft thinks they are fixing these issues with their next console, and creating an environment more suitable to free-to-play games and downloadable things in general; I assume Sony is thinking similarly. I will be very surprised if either of them succeeds in fixing these problems. Large institutions always undercorrect; they always think they are being radical and risky when in fact they are doing something tame that is just a modified version of the status quo. When large institutions need to change course by 95% in order to do well, even if they know it’s an emergency and are totally panicked, they can probably only manage about 35%. For recent illustrations of this, look at Nokia and RIM (or, uhh, look at the large governments of Earth in dealing with global warming).

As outlined in our complaint, when The Ville was introduced in June 2012, the infringement of The Sims Social was unmistakable to those of us at Maxis as well as to players and the industry at large. The similarities go well beyond any superficial resemblance. Zynga’s design choices, animations, visual arrangements and character motions and actions have been directly lifted from The Sims Social. The copying was so comprehensive that the two games are, to an uninitiated observer, largely indistinguishable. Scores of media and bloggers commented on the blatant mimicry.

Bungie is well-liked because they release polished games without any major bugs and have excellent online support and features at no additional cost.

Is there any other way to become well-liked?

Great games are often not particularly revolutionary - they're just well-executed. Blizzard hasn't innovated ever - the basic themes of Warcraft and Starcraft are pretty close copies from Games Workshop, and the game mechanics are also nothing new, but the games work, and they're balanced. Halo is another good example of that - Bungie copied the entire weapons balance from their own Marathon (removed the flamethrower, added the needler and the sniper rifle, but all the other weapons have an exact analogue), tweaked the regenerating health a bit and made pretty graphics that flowed buttery smooth. I don't think I've seen a revolutionary game that turned out great since the original Civilization, and that one launched with some pretty serious flaws.

The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.

A revolutionary game will always be more fraught will problems by nature than simply just a polishing of long-held designs. Of course, even making an evolution of a AAA game can be a shit-show (CoD series)

My main love for Bungie has nothing to do with the actual nuts and bolts of the gameplay, but is more an admiration of the extreme layer of gloss that coats the end-user experience.

GameStop takes a more reasonable tack in negotiating this emotional minefield. Company president Paul Raines draws the stats from his holster, saying that 70 percent of income that gets handed over to consumers for traded goods is immediately spent on new games. That's a $1.8 billion injection into the games industry.

People in the Steam gifting-scene from Russia and USA claim that they have received emails from Valve, urging them to stop gifting to players from Europe. On some accounts, buying games has been completely disabled.

This is completely unacceptable. For most of people, buying games via a USA-gifter has never been about getting the game cheaper (at least not for Germans). It has always been about getting the uncut version of a game.

Here’s the rest of the text from the reddit user lighthaze.

“I see Valve’s problem from a monetary point-of-view (games are cheaper in Russia / the USA than in Europe), but I think it’s hypocritical of Valve to use the advantages of globalization, while prohibiting it’s users from doing the same.

So, how about that new Netflix? As if the damn thing didn't take a minute to boot, now I get nice pause screen half-way where I must choose the version of Netflix I want. I swear to god, this app keeps getting worse each iteration (How do I avoid spoilers for the next episode?!).

PS3 users have been bitching since spring. Guess their exclusivity just expired. FFS

So, how about that new Netflix? As if the damn thing didn't take a minute to boot, now I get nice pause screen half-way where I must choose the version of Netflix I want. I swear to god, this app keeps getting worse each iteration (How do I avoid spoilers for the next episode?!).
PS3 users have been bitching since spring. Guess their exclusivity just expired. FFS

We have? I've always preferred the PS3 app 100x more than the 360 one. Same with the family.

Originally Posted by Stogieman

Netflix runs just fine for me.

On my AppleTV.

No doubt about it. Thinking about getting a new one for the living room TV, especially since they added Hulu+ support.

PS Vita 1.8. Featuring amazing stuff like controlling the interface with buttons, rewinding and fast forwarding video, and importing music playlists. Wowsers, thats a totally amazeballs list of stuff that should have been there to start with!!!